odd

A particularly unlikely or mismatched pair of people. Though the senator and her running mate are quite the odd couple on paper, the partnership is clearly intended to broaden the scope of her appeal to voters in the upcoming election. We're a bit of an odd couple, all right, but the differences between my girlfriend and I seem to balance each other out.

A rather unusual, strange, or peculiar person. His new girlfriend is nice enough, but she's a bit of an odd duck, don't you think?

Strange and intriguing. We've had some odd and curious findings ever since making that change to the experiment.

Someone deemed strange by others. No, I didn't invite Joey—he's an odd fish, if you ask me. You can't say weird stuff like that, unless you want everyone else to think you're an odd fish.

an unusual or atypical person or thing. I'm odd man out because I'm not wearing a tie. You had better learn to use the new system software unless you want to be odd man out.

an extra or spare something; a chance something. The tailor repaired the odd loose button on my shirt. When I travel, I might buy the odd trinket or two, but I never spend much money.

If two people or groups make strange bedfellows, they are connected in a particular activity though they are very different and would not usually have the same opinions or be seen together. Priests and pop stars make strange bedfellows, but on this issue they agree.

someone or something that is different from the other people or things in a group She was always the odd one out at school - she didn't really mix with the other children. I felt like the odd man out yesterday. Everyone was watching football except me.

see under strange bedfellows.

A peculiar alliance or combination, as in George and Arthur really are strange bedfellows, sharing the same job but totally different in their views . Although strictly speaking bedfellows are persons who share a bed, like husband and wife, the term has been used figuratively since the late 1400s. This particular idiom may have been invented by Shakespeare in The Tempest (2:2), "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows." Today a common extension is politics makes strange bedfellows, meaning that politicians form peculiar associations so as to win more votes. A similar term is odd couple, a pair who share either housing or a business but are very different in most ways. This term gained currency with Neil Simon's Broadway play The Odd Couple and, even more, with the motion picture (1968) and subsequent television series based on it, contrasting housemates Felix and Oscar, one meticulously neat and obsessively punctual, the other extremely messy and casual.

An archaic interjection meaning “God's body.” In an era where people respected the Ten Commandments a lot more than we do today, the injuncTion against taking the name of the Lord in vain led to a variety of euphemisms. One involved using the word “bodkins,” the tools that shoemakers and other leatherworkers use to pierce holes, for “body.” The most convincing explanation is that “bodkins” sounds a lot like “body,” but there's no explanation for the plural. Therefore, when a cobbler hit his thumb while resoling a shoe, he was likely to wince and exclaim, “Odd's bodkins,” if not something worse. Henry Fielding was the first author to use the phrase in close to its present form in his Don Quixote in England: “Odsbodlikins . . . you have a strange sort of a taste.” Similar oaths that avoided naming the diety used “'s” as an abbreviation of “God's,” such as “s'wounds,” “s'blood,” and “s'truth.” However, it's unlikely that Ira Gershwin had that in mind when he wrote the lyrics to “S'Wonderful.”